I am an author, independent researcher and speaker exploring innovation, information technology trends and markets. I am also a co-author of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation in business and IT. I also served on the program committee of the International SOA and Cloud Symposium series.
Much of my research work is in conjunction with Forbes Insights and Unisphere Research/ Information Today, Inc., covering topics such as cloud computing, digital transformation, enterprise mobility, and big data analytics. I am also a contributor to CBS interactive, authoring the ZDNet "Service Oriented" site.
In a previous life, I served as communications and research manager of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. I am a graduate of Temple University.

7 'Half-Baked Ideas' on Where Cloud Will Take Us in 2013 and Beyond

The other week, we presented seven solid predictions on the direction of cloud computing over the coming year, delivered by some top analysts. And, no doubt you have been reading and hearing predictions from every corner. But, if you bear with me, I would like to add to the mix some of my own thoughts — or rather, some half-baked ideas (HBIs) — on trends that may or may not emerge on the scene over the coming year. They are still works in progress. These trends aren’t necessarily here in force at the moment, and may not be a year from now, but they represent some interesting directions in which cloud may take us.

Photo: Joe McKendrick

So, without further ado, here are some half-baked ideas on cloud for the year ahead:

1. Non-IT companies grow their businesses as cloud providers: Interestingly, I’ve had plenty of discussions with IT executives about the digital services they are now extending past their firewalls to customers and partners. I invariably ask them if they now consider themselves to be cloud companies, and they usually emphatically deny that label. But the lines keep getting blurrier and blurrier between cloud IT providers and consumers. Most organizations, in fact, are both cloud service consumers and providers. That goes for every company – from aircraft manufactures to bakeries. Other possibilities: subscribing to cloud services such as Amazon or RackSpace and passing on those capabilities to their own customers. Or even opening up cycles within their data centers to rental arrangements.

2. More all-cloud companies, cloud-enabled entrepreneurial boom: There will be more growth in startups and smaller operations with no local capabilities at all — they will be extremely lightweight businesses, existing almost entirely in the cloud. Plus, there will be a while new economy developing with these new cloud-based enterprises leading the way. It’s inevitable, with high levels of unemployment and underemployment – frustrated professionals will be turning to the abundance of online resources, APIs and services that are now available to build their own futures.

3. Cloud workforces: work at home, crowdsourced labor: Along with all-cloud businesses, there will be more cloud-based workforces. There’s already an abundance of telecommuters and virtual workers who log in every day from homes, Starbucks, and remote offices across the globe. Thanks to technology, more work itself is being delivered and returned piecemeal over the Internet — a practice referred to as crowdsourced labor or “crowd labor.” Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) is the best-known example, but plenty of other services exist in the space. The RE-CAPTCHA security exercises at the bottom of transaction or comment pages actually are a crowd labor means of converting words from old books and documents into text. In a recent article, Joseph Turian observes that crowdsourced labor is already being used by many companies to analyze and code retail-store surveillance footage for customer visitation patterns, or by ad and marketing agencies to perform granular sentiment analysis and do keyword research, writing, editing and tagging images.

4. New and lightweight forms of business process outsourcing: Many business process outsourcing functions — from payment processing to credit-card transaction processing to expense management to procurement to document management to HR — are now available via open APIs through the cloud. Expect to see more lightweight outsourcing engagements — in which specific outside services are accessed — versus more heavy-duty winner-takes-all outsourcing contracts.

5. Rise of IT managers into the business: While some have feared cloud may make IT departments no longer relevant, the opposite effect is occurring. The ability to move forward with information technology is now seen as a vital strategic and competitive advantage, and those organizations that can do it in the nimblest and smartest fashion will come out ahead. IT executives will increasingly be stepping forward to lead the way, provisioning resources both from within and outside the enterprise walls. In addition, as pointed out at the beginning of this article, many organizations themselves are getting into the cloud computing business, and tech-savvy leadership is essential.

6. Cloud skills shortages, disconnect with universities and training: In the midst of high unemployment, organizations are still scrambling — and having difficulties finding — tech-savvy talent that will help them move forward in the digital economy. While many university and corporate training efforts may be doing a good job of delivering technical skills — such as Java or C/C++ programming — the new cloud-borne enterprise also demands business-savvy skills. as mentioned in the previous point, IT leaders and professionals will increasingly be called upon to lead their businesses to greener pastures. And, speaking of greener pastures, that brings us to our final half-baked idea…

7. Cloud increasingly recognized as a “green” enabler: There’s been plenty of concern about the amounts of energy consumed by cloud data centers. But it’s worth pointing out — and worth a study — to ask how many new data centers are not being built as a result of cloud computing. Assuming we see 100,000 all-cloud companies emerge over the next few years, that’s 100,000 new data centers not being built, but rather, being consolidated into multi-tenant data centers somewhere else. Plus, how many retail locations are not being built as a result of e-commerce, and how many trees being saved as a result of electronic data transfers, and how much oil not being burned because workforces are going virtual? Again, it would be interesting to see a study on this.

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